I will be posting much less frequently over the next few weeks. I'm preparing for a public presentation of my research on depression and antidepressants on September 24th, and I won't have much time for the blog during that period.
In the meantime, please feel free to comment on existing articles and I will make an effort to respond.
If you are local (SF Bay Area), keep an eye out for an upcoming announcement for the public ...
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In Part I and Part II of this series, we examined drug-free alternatives to treating depression including exercise, psychotherapy, light therapy, St. John's Wort and acupuncture. We have learned that all of these treatments are at least as effective as antidepressants in the short term, and some (exercise and psychotherapy) are more effective in the long-term. All of these treatments have far fewer side effects, risks and complications than antidepressants. In fact, the ...
People taking prescription antidepressants appear to drive worse than people who aren't taking such drugs, and depressed people on antidepressants have even more trouble concentrating and reacting behind the wheel.
These were the conclusions of a study recently released at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.
The group taking antidepressants who reported a high number of symptoms of depression performed significantly worse than the control group on several of the driving performance tasks.
Participants in the study ...
In the first article in this three-part series on treating depression without drugs, we established that several non-drug treatments are at least as effective in treating depression than antidepressants - with few, if any of their side effects. Specifically, we learned that both psychotherapy and exercise compare favorably with antidepressants for treating even serious depression in the short-term, and are both more effective than antidepressants in the long-term.
Today we will examine three other drug-free treatments ...
The most widely prescribed drugs in the U.S. are not for pain management, cholesterol lowering, heartburn or hypertension.
They're for depression.
Last year doctors wrote $232.7 million prescriptions for antidepressants. That's an increase of 25 million prescriptions since 2003 and translates into an estimated 30 million patients in the United States who spent $12 billion on antidepressants in 2007.
With numbers like these, a person might make these assumptions:
Antidepressants are effective treatments for depression
There are few, if any, ...
In the last few articles in my series on antidepressants and depression, I have presented evidence demonstrating that - despite popular belief - depression is not caused by a deficiency of serotonin in the brain.
However, this of course does not suggest that depression is completely divorced from biochemical processes in the body. The brain is a "living orchestra" of complex, interconnected systems that are in continuous relationship with one another. Everything from the food ...
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